Ken Rosewall’s presence at Wimbledon this weekend serves as a felicitous reminder that in the hard-nosed world of professional sport sentiment alone is insufficient to win the day.

The 82-year-old was already in his 40th year when, in 1974, some 20 years after he had done so as a teenager, he reached the Wimbledon men’s final still seeking his first title win.

There was, however, to be no fairytale, or at least not for the Australian artist as the then emergent American tyro Jimmy Connors blasted him off the court in double quick time to match his then fiancée Chris Evert by winning a first Wimbledon singles title that year.

Not least because Marin Cilic has done it to him before when it seemed that he was set to add to his Grand Slam title collection following the elimination of his three great rivals at the 2014 US Open, the warning is clear for Roger Federer’s disciples, that nothing is guaranteed for their deity this afternoon.

However while only Rosewall has been older when he won the Australian Opens of 1971 and ’72 and was the great stylist of his day, comparisons must end there because he was very clearly in his sporting dotage when the quality of his shot-making was overwhelmed by Connors’ aggression.

By contrast Federer has been revitalised since taking time out to heal a body that was clearly ailing for the first time in his career when he hobbled out of Wimbledon last year, having suffered a nasty collision with his beloved Centre Court turf on the way to semi-final defeat at the hands of Milos Raonic. So much so that there is a sense of awe among his opponents, while his only half-joking observation following his semi-final win that he does not feel as if he looks very different to the way he did last time he won this title five years ago, speaks to a deep sense of well-being.

Even so, he is up against an opponent who carries menace in every sense. The Croatian’s on-court presence is a brooding one, that of one who plays with the knowledge that some will still regard him with suspicion as a result of the doping ban he received in 2013, but perhaps more so because of a sense of having been wronged by both what happened and the reaction of some of his peers, notably Andy Murray. It was an unpleasant episode all round, Murray rightly branding both Cilic and Viktor Troicki ‘unprofessional’ for having ingested contaminated substances whether or not they knew what they contained.

Such observations were to draw a ludicrous response from Cilic’s fellow Croat and coach Goran Ivanisevic, the fiery former Wimbledon champion who claimed players should never speak out against their peers whatever they do “especially if they are not guilty.” His man self-evidently was guilty and the notion of sporting omerta should have ended with Lance Armstrong’s shaming, but it is also understandable that Cilic now plays with a renewed determination to prove himself which was evident when he blitzed Federer, among others, on his way to that sensational US Open win in 2014.

That he is by no means an unpopular figure on tour as a result has been made evident by Federer who seemed genuine in indicating how much he likes the man he will meet in his first Wimbledon final. As he said so, however, there was a sense that he was reinforcing what Cilic had already recognised, that one of them will be experiencing something for the very first time against someone who could not be on more familiar territory.

What Cilic will confront is not only the greatest player the sport has ever seen in terms of both playing style and title accrual, but a wall of emotional support. Where many first time finalists could buckle under that it seems all the more unlikely that this one will, partly because the 28-year-old is no naïve youngster, having contested Grand Slam tournaments for more than a decade, but perhaps even more importantly because he is so used to heading onto court dealing with a sense of adversity.

He will not, of course, experience any direct hostility because this is Wimbledon. The size of what he is up against will, instead, manifest itself in the contrast between the ecstasy that will greet his opponent’s successes at key moments and the respect that will be accorded his own.

Not least because Andy Murray’s solitary defeat in the final was at the hands of the beloved Federer, Marin Cilic will, through absolutely no fault of his own on this occasion, be the least popular winner in Wimbledon history if he wins today. Both form and class suggest he will not, but he is unlikely to beat himself.